


i've found work and welcome everywhere i've been

by redbrunja



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gaby and Solo are BFFs, Gen, Humor, Mission Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-17 01:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13648464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/pseuds/redbrunja
Summary: The CIA requested a favor from UNCLE.It was hard to say who hated that more, Sanders having to ask or Solo having to help.And once again, Gaby is stuck playing mother.





	i've found work and welcome everywhere i've been

At 8:15 a.m. on a bright, sunny Tuesday morning, Gaby parked a red jag half a block away from Adrian Sanders' home. He lived in a suburb on the edge of Washington D.C. The houses were all freshly painted, regularly placed mailboxes with all-American surnames stenciled on the sides. Each lawn was precisely manicured, the same shade of too-vivid green.

Some of the driveways had gleaming, pastel colored cars in them, some were empty rectangles of light grey concrete, unmarked by cracks or oil stains.

Edging the side walk on both sides of the street leading up to Sanders' house were a fleet of dark, boxy cars.

She and Napoleon got out of the jag, surveyed the street.

Gaby lifted her Thierry Lasry sunglass up, seeing if the disturbingly uniform, vibrant color scheme would resolve into something that made more sense to her eyes. It didn't.

She let her sunglasses drop back onto her nose, gaining a new appreciation for the lenses of tinted glass between her and the suburb.

"I've never understood the way government work leads to people losing all sense of beauty," Napoleon commented, staring at the vehicle in front of them. "Who would deliberately paint a vehicle that color?" He sighed. "Have I mentioned the four years I was required to wear olive drab?"

Gaby didn't answer.

The front door of the house closest to them opened, a tow-headed girl dashing down the steps and pulling a bike up from where it rested on the lawn. Her mother appeared in the doorway, wearing a cherry-red dress. She called her daughter back to the door, had a low-voiced conversation while staring suspiciously at Gaby and Napoleon.

The girl nodded, went back to her bike, and walked it past the two spies outside her home. She watched them curiously and then as soon as she was past, she hopped on her bike and pedaled furiously away.

The mother saw her daughter off and then closed the front door firmly.

Gaby watched this interaction with detachment.

Napoleon touched the small of her back gently, his fingers warm against the section of her back bared by her cut-out dress, recalling her to their task.

"Just once into the breach," he said, as if he could make promises.

She still cracked a smile at that.

They walked up the blindingly white cement sidewalk to Sanders' home.

U.N.C.L.E. had been called in after An Incident (Sanders still refused to disclose the details) that had lead to a meeting involving two US Cabinet members, the director of the FBI, several CIA directors, and associated staff to be held at his home.

During that meeting, a briefcase containing files related to the United States' missile defense system was stolen. From Waverly's report, the situation then devolved into an interdepartmental sandbox fight. Until someone with enough pull to make the edict stick had decided they wanted the situation resolved and found U.N.C.L.E. to be the least embarrassing third party that could be called in.

The agent posted at the door reported that Sanders didn't have time to see them yet.

A blatant and petty powerplay. Gaby wasn't sure if Sanders objected to U.N.C.L.E. helping him generally, or Solo specifically.

Gaby put the time Sanders wanted them to waste to good use. She elbowed her way into getting a look at the list of who had been in and out of the house for the last two weeks. There was the official log, from the day in question, written in some secretary's clear, clean hand. There was Sanders' recollection, his handwriting crabbed and sharp, a contrast to his wife's flowery, more comprehensive list. Gaby copied out all of the names.

Then she crawled around the baseboards and behind the furniture, tracking the wiring and identifying surveillance equipment while Napoleon greeted each agent in the house by name and asked after their wives, mistresses, and favorite horses.

Finally, Sanders decided he was ready to talk to them. His aide escorted them to his study, a dim room filled with heavy furniture. Behind his desk, there was a blocky painting of Sanders, his wife, and a fluffy, smushed-faced cat.

The aide positioned himself behind Sanders' armchair.

Gaby and Napoleon took their seats across from him, the empty fireplace to Gaby's left.

Sanders grimaced and ground out a cigarette into the ashtray on the end table at his elbow.

"Well, at least you didn't bring that fucking Ruskie you're working with," Sanders said.

Gaby kept her face perfectly blank.

"Hello, Mr. Sanders," Gaby said. Napoleon settled himself comfortably, looking over the room with an air of curious appraisal.

Gaby once spent an entire week bugging the Finnish consulate in Vienna and personally eavesdropping on several important meetings. She accomplished this by virtue of wearing a boring suit, walking in three minutes before meetings started, sitting in an out-of-the-way chair, and taking attentive notes. She was obviously someone's mousy secretary, every single person had assumed.

Solo was doing the opposite of that.

Without saying a word, he drew the attention of the room to him. Gaby was familiar with Napoleon. She knew exactly how handsome he was and yet the line of his jaw and the blue of his eyes kept catching her attention as she asked Sanders questions.

At one point Napoleon adjusted one of his cuffs, thumb smoothing over the bright spark of his cuff-link.

Sanders' aide, who had been giving an overview of the staff Sanders' wife employed stuttered to a stop, barely managing to swallow a longing sigh.

Gaby, Sanders, and Sanders' aide all fell silent watching this minute adjustment to Napoleon’s wardrobe with undue attention.

Charisma. Magnetism. The aura of an innate showman. Gaby didn't quite know how to describe it, but she knew that if Solo didn't turn it down, he was going to get punched in the face by the man that was still, nominally, his boss.

If Napoleon ended up annoying Sanders so much Sanders sent him back to prison, Gaby was going to be furious. She decided on the spot that if that occurred, she and Illya would take their sweet time breaking him out.

"Do you suppose it was your wife's lover or that promising young thing _you're_ fucking who made off with the missile defense plans?" Napoleon asked brightly. He slung one leg over his knee, the very image of insouciance.

Sanders sucked in a breath, leaned forward.

If she let this play out, she'd get nothing useful from him.

"Solo," Gaby snapped. Her voice was full of the lash of her temper, the threat of her diminishing patience.

Napoleon turned to her, gave her the full weight of his attention. His dark blue eyes fixed on her, he drew himself to readiness, he was poised to listen to the next words she spoke and spring to whatever action she requested.

It would be flattering, if she didn't know that he'd stolen his expression and body language wholesale from Illya, if she didn't suspect he was mocking her. If he wasn't about to completely bugger their mission because he hated his boss and resented being asked to keep his tongue between his teeth.

Her palm itched to slap him.

Saunders' aide was gaping at her as if he'd never seen a woman before. Sanders himself kept flicking his gaze between her and Napoleon like he was expecting to intercept them in the middle of a hand-off.

But Gaby had danced, had performed. She was not unaware of what to do with the attention of an entire room on her.

She let the silence hold.

"Solo," she said again, and even to her own ears she sounded regal. "I won't be much longer. I'd like you to wait in the car." She tipped her head towards to door.

Napoleon rose, touched two fingers to his forehead in a salute.

"Ma'am," he said, not looking away from her.

Sanders' aide sighed again.

Napoleon left and Gaby resented how the colors around her suddenly seemed duller.

Sanders glared at her with a disgusted curl to his lip. His aide was dazed.

Gaby looked past both of them at the dark, oppressively masculine study and the ugly painting of Sanders, his wife, and their fluffy, white little cat.

"I wasn't aware you had a pet," Gaby commented. "I haven't seen your cat around."

Her aim was two-fold. A sharp conversational turn to get the Americans' minds away from Napoleon. And she was curious that an animal beloved enough to be part of a portrait was entirely absent from the house.

"I could say the same, Miss Teller," Sanders growled. "I guess some men just need a pretty hand holding the leash."

Sanders' aide twisted his head to look at the painting.

"That's actually a dog," he clarified helpfully. "His name was 'Biscuits'."

For one brief, glorious moment, Gaby entertained the idea of following Solo out the door, leaving the Americans to their squabbles and backbiting, and letting the chips fall as they may.

Solo had been promising for months to escort her around New York. They could leave now, drive south, and be in another city by evening. They could dine at some expensive restaurant this evening, vanish into the cold.

Illya would be furious. Waverly would be disappointed. Depending on who ended up with details on the American missile program and how badly they wanted to see another world war, geo-political relations could get uncomfortably hot

"A dog. How adorable," Gaby said, saccharine. She let her smile sharpen, just a touch, and looked at Saunders' aide, the person with the worst poker face in the room. "But enough chit chat. Mr. Saunders, Solo was quite interested in who you're in bed with, but I'm personally more intrigued by the FBI taps on your phone lines."

* * *

 

Solo was lounging against the Jag when she strode out of Saunders' house, heels clicking against the bone-white sidewalk.

"Have a nice chat?" he asked her.

Gaby threw herself into the driver's seat, jammed the key into the ignition, started the car and threw it into gear. Solo somehow managed to get his ass into the passenger seat without appearing to hurry but before she accelerated out into the street, which was a feat that required some skill.

She was halfway back to the hotel before she was able to pull the knot of anger in her chest apart enough to speak.

"Thanks for that," she said bitingly. "Now that he thinks I'm screwing you, working with him going to be even worse than when he thought being bait was my only talent."

"If you to want to get chummy, you can get together and re-negotiate my prison sentence. Time added for bad behavior," Napoleon said with a cheeky grin. She'd think he couldn't care less, if he hadn't given her several very informative and deadly serious lessons on skimming funds and hiding them under aliases her superiors were unaware of. Solo could probably keep himself out of prison if the CIA decided to take him away from U.N.C.L.E but it would be a very, very ugly business.

Gaby scoffed. She glared through the windshield and attempted to unclench her jaw.

"What was that about bait?" Solo asked when her breathing was even and she was only going fifteen miles above the speed limit.

That first night in West Berlin. She'd been pressed against the wall, listening, desperate for any scrap of information she could get. She'd been trying to figure out if the addition of the CIA and KGB had thrown Waverly's plans into irrevocable disarray, if Waverly was the kind of man who kept his promises or if he'd throw her back into the GDR out of pique, if she'd should take her chances and say to hell with all of them and go off on her own, with no papers and no money. She'd caught snatches of conversation, and as Sanders' had left, he'd said to one of his other agents, "Teller's a pretty little bit of bait. Someone's going to have fun nibbling at her while we wait for her nazi daddy to show." The other agent had snorted and went, "More like _everyone_." They'd shared a laugh about it.

Gaby forced a shrug. She'd spent over a third of her life in a garage, she'd heard far worse, and said directly to her face.

"I suppose it doesn't matter," she admitted, her fingers relaxing their grip on the steering wheel. "He thinks you've been fucking me since West Berlin."

"Where would he get _that_ idea?" Napoleon asked, as if 'serial womanizer' wasn't typed out in black and white in his file.

Because Gaby didn't lie to her team about unimportant things, she told him.

Solo didn't look away from the road as he smiled tightly, the way he did whenever he was absolutely furious.

"....on the subject of Sanders and his problems, I'm concerned about the meeting where the plans were stolen - I think it involved biological warfare," she thought out loud. "One of the agents upstairs said something about being 'healthy as a horse' when I was behind the armoire and there were an unusually high number of doctors at that meeting. I can't imagine it takes eight physicians to explain the way men die from conventional bombing."

"No, it doesn't," said Napoleon sounding like his thoughts were a thousand miles away, his profile looking cool and perfect. She squinted at him.

"Whatever new ways Uncle Sam has of killing people doesn't get us closer to whomever stole those defense plans," he extracted her sunglasses from her purse, handed them to her. "And we would never _dream_ of overstepping the bounds of our invitation."

Napoleon didn't do anything so obvious as smirk at that and Gaby matched his sanguine expression as she slid the sunglasses on. She unrolled the window and pressed a little harder on the accelerator, just to feel the Jag respond and the wind tug at her hair.

* * *

 

Gaby woke to the click of a spoon against a teacup. For an instant Gaby's fingers tightened around the combat knife (a gift from Illya) she kept under her pillow and then she pushed the covers away from her face with her other hand and she saw Napoleon sitting in an armchair by her bed, stirring a cup of coffee.

She groaned and tossed the knife onto the bedside table. Napoleon didn't bat an eye at the weapon, but he did hand her the cup and saucer quite promptly.

Napoleon was impeccably dressed, even at the unholy hour of - Gaby looked blearily at the clock– 7:05 a.m. Next to him was a silver room service cart, bearing several carafes and dome-covered plates. She didn't want to think about him managing to sneak that into her hotel room without waking her. Even more horrifying than that thought was the hideously ugly painting leaning against Solo's chair, depicting Sanders, his wife, and their abominably fluffy pet.

Gaby was not convinced she was awake.

"Good morning, Fräulein Teller," Napoleon said brightly. "Sleep well?"

Gaby gave him a withering look. She hadn't slept well. She'd been up until four o'clock in the morning, reading and rereading the files on: every person who'd been in Sanders house on the day of the theft; all of Sanders' neighbors; the maid who cleaned twice-weekly; and the gardener and his son who came by every Tuesday.

Napoleon hadn't helped at all. He'd left her at her door so he could go "meet up with some CIA contacts" which could have meant he was going to find out the details of The Incident that had started all this and could have meant that he was going to go fuck the hotel concierge.

Gaby could have used his help. She looked at names and personal details and each person seemed just as weak and self-serving as the next. She didn't have Napoleon's gift for reading people - even people who he only met on paper. Or Illya's training - the KGB had done an excellent job teaching him how to hunt down illicit dealings and shady transactions.

Napoleon handed her a coffee. "Drink up," he said. "We've got many things to go before our flight leave for Georgia."

Illya was in Tbilisi.

"What did Illya do?" Gaby asked, throwing back the covers and shoving the saucer and teacup onto the beside table, coffee sloshing over the rim. "And it will be just me."

Neither she nor Solo spoke Russian well enough to be mistaken for a child of the Motherland. Given that, she, with her East German accent and ability to look like a properly worn-down communist girl, who be more effective than Solo, with his smart suit and smarter mouth. Besides, someone had to finish this mission and Gaby would get nowhere without Solo's sharp presence at her side.

"Gaby, wait," Solo caught her wrist, rubbed his thumb soothingly across her skin.

"Peril don't need you to ride to his rescue," he said. "I was referring to Atlanta, Georgia. The state, not the country."

Gaby sat back down on the bed, dregged up past conversations with Waverly. Her mind felt permanently between gears.

"The CDC?" she asked after a moment.

"Full marks," Solo said with his most roguishly charming smirk. He rose to his feet in a jaunty movement and headed to her closet.

"I had an interesting conversation with a very talkative young man last night," he continued, riffling through the dresses she's brought. "I think it would behoove us to pay a little visit to the CDC."

Gaby reached across the bed and grabbed two files: an FBI agent who was connected with the surveillance on Sanders and a Center For Disease Control doctor. The two were brothers-in-law.

Solo glanced over his shoulder, read the names, and said, "I see you're familiar with who we're going to see in Atlanta."

Gaby dropped the files, reached for her coffee. She took a long sip and stared at the painting against Solo's armchair.

"And that painting?" she asked.

"Oh, that? A little bit of moonlighting."

"I understand why you stole it," Gaby said. "I don't understand why you brought it to my hotel room. It's hideous."

"Isn't it?" Napoleon agreed. "We're going to be exchanging that for a nice Klimit before we leave."

Gaby doesn't waste her breath telling him that no one in their right mind would have anything to do with that painting -much less give up a playful, colorful Klimit– but her snort elegantly expressed her disbelief.

"Oh? How do you plan to manage that?" she asked.

Napoleon laid her black dress across the foot of the bed.

"That would be telling," he said. "Now. How convincing can you be as a grieving widow?"

* * *

 

The weather in London was grey, rain spitting sullenly from the clouds, the wind gusting damply.

Gaby was in a cheerful mood as she zipped through traffic before pulling into her parking spot at U.N.C.L.E H.Q. She was pleased to be back in London.

She breezed through a quick elevator ride, the standard security measures, and then she was headed to her office, her purse slung over her shoulder, a stack of files in the crook of her elbow, and a cup of coffee in her free hand. She was ready to sink her teeth into the newest international problem Waverly had decided needed untangling.

She pushed the door of her office open and froze. For a instant she was certain she'd walked into the wrong room.

One side of her office was windows and the other three empty walls were painted a dull beige. Or- the walls _had_ been a dull beige. Now, they were painted a deep, vibrant blue. She stepped slowly into her office. Opposite her desk hung a painting of a dark-haired ballerina, in three-quarter profile. The ballerina rested one hand on the barre, the other stretched above her as she arched back in a graceful perfect curve.

Gaby went to her desk, set the files down. She sat in her chair and leaned back, taking a thoughtful sip of coffee.

The painting was a still image but every brush stoke evoked the joy of motion, of what it felt like to dance for the sheer joy of moving. It made her entire office feel brighter, lighter.

Well- Gaby looked up at the ceiling and then at the new reading lamp on her desk. Partially that was due to the new lighting fixtures but– undeniably, it was a very pretty painting.

Working to suppress a smile, Gaby opened the first file.

**Author's Note:**

> once Team U.N.C.L.E. is reunited, Napoleon is going to get _so_ much mileage out of the fact that all of them spent some time in a place called Georgia.


End file.
